Review: ‘Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms’

Hammered gold plaques, among the works on display in “Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms” at the Asia Society.CreditCreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

By Ken Johnson

Sept. 24, 2015

More than half a millennium before Ferdinand Magellan reached the archipelago now called the Philippines in 1521, a number of related societies thrived there. Little is known about them. They left no enduring architecture, monuments or literature. One thing is certain, however: They were astoundingly skillful goldsmiths.

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A female image with hands raised in the orant position.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A funerary mask from Mindanao, left and a mask from Butuan.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Organized by the Asia Society’s Adriana Proser and, as consulting curator, Florina Capistrano-Baker of the Ayala Museum, Philippines, to which most of the items on view belong, the show includes bracelets, bangles, necklaces, pendants, pectorals, collars, finger rings, dishes, bowls, a balance scale made entirely of gold and triangular pieces with rounded corners called “chastity covers” designed to be worn by women over their genitals. Many objects in the exhibition are so small and finely made that it’s nearly impossible to appreciate their details with naked eyes. Fortunately, magnifying glasses are provided, and viewers are well advised to use them for the marvels of technical prowess they reveal.

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A bowl from the 10th-13 centuries.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The star of the show and the biggest piece is a gleaming sash that could be mistaken for a futuristic ammunition belt. Made of myriad gold beads, it’s designed to be worn over one shoulder, across the chest and to the hip where one end threads through a loop and concludes with the setting for a now lost finial. Nearly five feet long and square sectioned (about an inch on a side), it weighs about nine pounds.

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An open vessel.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Another striking piece, called a kamagi, consists of 12 necklaces strung together into a nearly 15-foot-long chain punctuated by small, colored stones. The individual necklaces are composed of smooth, interlocking beads that combine to form flexible, snakelike lengths of gold.

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A sculpture in the form of a bird with the head of a woman, a type of mythical creature known as a kinnari, circa 10th-13th century.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

There are several waistbands with sumptuously decorative buckles. About two inches wide and two or more feet long, the belts are made mainly using a “loop-in-loop” technique, which creates patterns like those of a knitted sweater. Tubular and other sorts of beads woven into the belts interject zigzag and stripe patterns.

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A sash or caste cord.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Few of the objects displayed involve figurative imagery, but those that do are especially noteworthy. A flat piece with a flamelike outline frames the large, triangular face of a woman drawn in sharp lines with little shoulders and arms raised in a gesture of worship. Above her head is a tree of life symbol. While Hindu and Buddhist influences are evident in some other works, this one suggests a nature-based religion. It also makes a viewer wonder what other sorts of pictorial traditions these early Filipinos had, but it seems we’ll never know about that.

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A kamagi, with necklaces strung together into a long chain.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

How was it that knowledge of a culture — or collection of cultures — capable of such exquisite and sophisticated metalworking was forgotten and left without a name? That is a tangled tale.

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A set of arm ornaments.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Gold was always plentiful in the Philippines, readily collected by panning. Today the country is said to have the world’s second richest gold deposits. When the Spanish landed, they found natives sporting much gold jewelry and regalia. Illustrations in a book from around 1590 called “The Boxer Codex,” on view in the exhibition, depict indigenous people wearing ostentatious gold adornments over flowing, colorful garments. But the Spanish colonizers wasted little time in decimating the native cultures and making off with their gold, which they melted down for their own purposes.

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A chastity cover.CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The first modern discoveries of precolonial gold were made by the French explorer Alfred Marche, who, in 1881, uncovered about 10 pieces in wooden coffins and Chinese export jars in burial sites on the island of Marinduque. (By carbon dating the ceramic vessels that gold pieces were regularly found buried in, archaeologists later determined that most of the gold that has come to light was produced from the 10th through the 13th centuries.)

More gold artifacts turned up here and there over the ensuing decades, but it was not until a hundred years later that the next major find occurred. One day in April 1981, a heavy machinery operator named Edilberto Morales was working on an irrigation project in Surigao del Sur province in the island of Mindanao when he accidentally unearthed a metal bowl, which turned out to be made of gold. That partly dented, elegantly simple vessel is in the exhibition. During the rest of the day, Mr. Morales uncovered many more gold pieces – 22 pounds’ worth – of what came to be known as the Surigao Treasure.

Looters quickly flocked to the site, scooping up untold numbers of objects that they sold to dealers and collectors, effectively destroying much archaeological evidence. Mr. Morales and his family went into hiding for fear of thieves and kidnappers interested in his sudden presumptive wealth.

All that gold would have remained scattered around the world but for the efforts of three people determined to preserve this foundational dimension of Filipino heritage. Between 1960 and 1981, the archaeologist Cecilia Y. Locsin and her husband, the architect Leandro V. Locsin purchased gold pieces from dealers as well as from grave diggers, farmers and fisherman who had acquired works by more or less shady means. The couple accumulated the more than 1,000 gold objects now owned by the Ayala Museum.

In the early 1980s, Jaime C. Laya, then governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines, acquired many objects from the Surigao Treasure for the bank’s collection. About 28 of the exhibition’s objects are from that collection.

While much thus has been saved, far more has been lost. One of the show’s loveliest pieces inadvertently reflects the fragility of ancient traditions. It’s a small sculpture in the form of a bird with the head of a woman, a type of mythical creature known as a kinnari. (As such human-avian hybrids often appear in Hindu and Buddhist art, this one suggests influences from other parts of Asia probably through nautical trade routes.) About the size of a goldfinch, its head is cast in gold and its hollow, thin-walled body inscribed with a pattern of feathers. Sadly, its wings have been amputated, probably by an unscrupulous gold hunter, and its body is partly crushed. In this wounded state, it nevertheless has a poignant, poetic quality, as if it had been made this way to lament the ephemeral nature of art and life.